I’ve had the chance to fly the SR22-G3 on two occasions now, once at the Sun ‘n Fun Fly-In in April and once out of Austin this summer.Īs you might know, the G3 Turbo is the result of a partnership between Cirrus and Tornado Alley, which developed the STC for the turbocharger installation. While the Entegra remains a fine system when coupled with the Garmin navigators and has a lot of added capability over the first sets in the SR22, the feature-rich S-Tec 55X seems better suited to the speeds and altitudes of the nonturbocharged model. The autopilot is the rate-based S-Tec 55X. The system makes use of a pair of Garmin GNS 430 navigators with built-in comm radios. And the system has a lot of capability, including XM Weather, engine monitoring, CMax Charts and much more. The G3 is equipped with the Avidyne Entegra flat-panel avionics system, with large-screen PFD and MFD. The leather interior in the airplane I flew was black, which is a nice color, so long as you keep it hangared and have air conditioning. There’s a new, sleeker and flusher switch panel in front of the pilot, new and much improved environmental controls on the right side, all new headliner and panel surrounds and improved door mechanisms. Again, I don’t know just how many of those 700-plus changes were done on the inside of the airplane, but I’d guess a high number. The interior of the G3, which is where we pilots spend most of our time, after all, is much improved over an already nicely refined environment. Cirrus made the rear steps longer and lowered the handhold to keep it easy to get up on the higher-situated wing when boarding. The G3 sits about three inches higher than previous models, and it employs the wide-chord composite Hartzell prop introduced last summer on the G2 Turbo. Two other noticeable differences are the length of the gear and the prop. And the fresh air vent is no longer situated on the wing root, a good, quick way to tell G2 from G3. There are new features on the wing, too, including better recognition and taxi lights, a longer, continuous TKS leading edge, with the stall strip deiced, as well, and improved aerodynamic shapes on the trailing edge of the airfoils. That’s because the new wing is lighter, to the tune of around 66 pounds, or around 11 gallons worth of weight. It’s a welcome improvement, especially since the added fuel, and, hence, range, comes without a resultant decrease in full fuel payload. The wingspan is the same, but the new wing features a longer internal spar, so it can have shorter tips, which freed up room internally for more fuel, an additional 11 gallons. This greatly enhances the feel of the airplane, giving it much more pleasing flying qualities. It’s almost identical in shape and span to the one on previous models, but it has a lot more dihedral, which added enough stability that Cirrus was able to eliminate the rudder/aileron interconnect. Mostly that’s because of an all-new wing. In terms of handling, however, they never felt great, until now. That’s because they’re roomy, comfortable, well equipped and fast. I’ve got a few hundred hours in SR22s at this point, and I’ve always enjoyed flying the airplane. There are, according to Cirrus-I didn’t count them-more than 700 individual changes to the airplane.Īnd, unlike any of the previous upgrades to the SR22, the G3 boasts substantial aerodynamic changes. The system will be electric, with the condenser and battery situated toward the back of the airplane in order to help keep the CG aft and give better elevator control. It was expected to be available sometime this fall. At press time Cirrus was still working on the installation and the certification. The airplane we flew for this report, however, didn’t have A/C. For pilots who are based in hot places, deciding between turbocharging and air conditioning was a bit of a devil’s bargain. One big reason for this is that with the G3, the turbocharged airplane will also be available with air conditioning, which was not the case with the G2 turbo. A normally aspirated G3 will still be available, but we’d guess it will sell in much smaller numbers than the turbocharged version. Over the past four decades just about every new, turbocharged version of a good normally aspirated airplane immediately began outselling the original, usually by a wide margin.Īnd so it has been with the SR22, first with the G2 and now with the G3. As soon as Cirrus introduced the turbocharged G2 version last summer, it started getting orders for the model in much greater numbers than it expected. While Reid might be getting that question for a while longer, it probably won’t be more than a few months before controllers everywhere are used to sending SR22s to the flight levels.
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